AILSA CHANG, HOST:
Last night, Donald Trump announced the creation of the Department of Governmental Efficiency, or DOGE. He named two of his most prominent allies from the business world to lead DOGE - Elon Musk, the CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, and Vivek Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur who ran against Trump for the Republican nomination earlier this year. DOGE is getting a lot of attention, but a lot about it is unclear. Here to tell us what we do know is NPR political correspondent Danielle Kurtzleben. Hey, Danielle.
DANIELLE KURTZLEBEN, BYLINE: Hey, Ailsa.
CHANG: All right, let's do this. What do we know so far about DOGE?
KURTZLEBEN: We know very little, but we can glean some information from the statement Trump put out about it. For example, it is not clear if Trump envisioned DOGE as an official governmental department, and creating that would require an act of Congress.
CHANG: Right.
KURTZLEBEN: But what we do know is that Trump said Musk and Ramaswamy would be providing guidance from, as he put it, outside of government. So presumably - question mark - they are not intended to be government officials. But that raises more questions, because if this is an outside commission somehow, how is it funded?
CHANG: Right.
KURTZLEBEN: If it's taxpayer, how does that work? And how big is it? If it's somehow, maybe, funded from outside of government, wouldn't there be conflicts of interest? But then there's one more important point here, which is that whatever cuts DOGE ends up recommending, Musk and Ramaswamy can't cut anything. Congress has the budget power.
CHANG: Exactly. OK. So do we know anything about what Musk and Ramaswamy's priorities might be?
KURTZLEBEN: In short, cutting. But that's about it. Ramaswamy said during his primary campaign for president that he wanted to cut the federal workforce by 75%.
CHANG: Yeah.
KURTZLEBEN: Meanwhile, Musk said during Trump's October campaign rally at Madison Square Garden, he wants to cut government spending by $2 trillion. Now, both of those would be massive if they somehow happen. Two trillion dollars is around one-third of total government spending per year.
CHANG: Wow.
KURTZLEBEN: That would be very hard to cut without slashing the biggest government spending programs like Medicare and Social Security, which Trump has said he would not cut. So it's unclear how that would work. Likewise, cutting three-quarters of the federal workforce is a lot. And keep in mind, there are federal workers all over the country, including in red states. So it's not as if GOP members of Congress would be gung-ho about cutting a bunch of jobs.
But here's something important. We don't know what the top priority of this commission is. The statement about it talks a lot about cutting the federal workforce, but also talks about spending. Those two are not equivalent. The federal workforce is such a small part of government spending. As of 2022, that workforce received around 270 billion in compensation. Government spending total is 6.5 trillion, so it's hard to put a dent in that by cutting workers.
CHANG: Yeah, big difference between those two numbers you just cited. OK, so how does this new department, or non-department - I don't know what to call this yet - play into what we know about Trump's other ambitions for his second term?
KURTZLEBEN: I mean, in brief, it aligns with something he did at the end of his last term, which is called Schedule F. The basic idea is to recategorize federal workers, replace people in career positions with political appointees. Biden rescinded that, but he could do that again...
CHANG: Yeah.
KURTZLEBEN: ...Cutting a lot of workers. But the big question to me is Trump's fiscal plans. This could save some...
CHANG: OK.
KURTZLEBEN: ...Money, but he wants a bunch of tax cuts.
CHANG: Exactly.
KURTZLEBEN: And so deficits could go up, as they did the last time he was president.
CHANG: That is NPR's Danielle Kurtzleben. Thank you, Danielle.
KURTZLEBEN: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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